Great Plains Studies, Center for
Date of this Version
Winter 2005
Citation
Great Plains Quarterly Vol. 25, No. 4, Winter 2005, pp. 48-49.
Abstract
While the title of this perceptive study of hope and dread in Montana literature might seem to limit his audience, Ken Egan takes care to point out that the boom-and-bust cycle so well known to his fellow Montanans and so well documented by many of the state's authors is a familiar pattern throughout the Great Plains states whose economies and lifestyles have also depended on extractive industries and agricultural pursuits.
Egan makes this clear in his discussion of Joseph Kinsey Howard's Montana: High, Wide, and Handsome (1943). Howard's book of essays, Egan says, recapitulates the trends that Hope and Dread documents: "waves of dreams that come to naught on the high plains and in the mountains; betrayal by word and deed of native peoples and later immigrants; a surliness toward each other that takes root in this deprived soil." The Great Plains, portions of which some think should now be turned into a buffalo commons, shares both a past and a future, and a careful reading of Egan's study of the lessons learned through both historical and literary accounts of who we are, what we have done, and where we can go from here may help us map out a more successful future. Especially since Egan, despite his recognition of dread, is still able to offer personal anecdotes that support his belief that "[wle haven't killed the thing entire" and to point to several authors whose work centers on the building of "community" as a source of hope.
A. B. Guthrie Jr., D'Arcy McNickle, Dorothy M. Johnson, J ames Welch, Richard Hugo, and Mildred Walker are but a few of the authors whose works Egan discusses-and his careful readings of classic works along with his new perceptions will no doubt send readers of Hope and Dread in Montana Literature back to some well-loved titles for enriched rereadings.
Comments
Copyright 2005 by the Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska-Lincoln